South Carolina may soon become the next state in the US to pass legislation protecting women's sports from biological male competitors.
On Tuesday, South Carolina's House of Representatives passed the "Save Women's Sports Bill" in a 82-28 vote, according to the Daily Mail.
The bill passed through the Republican-majority House despite a marathon debate spanning eight hours and around 1,000 amendments proposed by Democrat lawmakers.
The bill now heads to the Republican-majority Senate for consideration.
Mirroring similar legislation passed in states across the country, South Carolina's bill states that students will participate on sports teams that line up with their biological sex at birth.
During deliberations, Republican House Speaker Jay Lucas threw out nearly 600 amendment proposals for the bill, saying these proposals were all nearly identical, making only small changes like altering names of schools.
Following the ruling against those amendments, Democrats made even more proposed amendments, with the writer of the majority of these changes said bringing the House to a halt for several hours was a victory.
"Today we saw so many of my colleague stand up for people who do not often have a voice," said Representative John King, a Democrat from Rock Hill.
According to the Daily Mail, some of the proposals would have made substantial changes to the bill, including allowing public high schools to opt out of the legislation, or requiring women's sports teams to have the same number of assistant coaches or amenities as men’s teams.
Other amendments did things like propose a title change to the "Discrimination Capital of the United States Act," name individual schools, or allow school bands to only play at women's sporting events.
One proposed amendment that passed will create girls' wrestling teams within high schools.
Over a dozen states have passed legislation setting definitions for who can compete in women's sports, including Oklahoma, Arizona, and South Dakota, with a bulk of the states proposing and passing the legislation in recent months, as outcry over transgender swimmer Lia Thomas grew.
Thomas went on to compete in the NCAA championships late last month, where the UPenn swimmer came in first in the 500 yard freestyle. Thomas' appearance at the championships was met with protests both inside and outside the building, and since then, swimmers have begun speaking out against competing with Thomas, who until this year, had competed as a male athlete.
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